Long Time, No See - Hardcover

Healy, Dermot

3.76

293 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670023604 ISBN 13: 9780670023608

Publisher: Viking, 2012

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The funny, moving, long-awaited masterwork from "Ireland’s finest living novelist" (Roddy Doyle)

Celebrated Irish author Dermot Healy’s first novel in more than ten years is a rich, beguiling, compassionate, and wonderfully funny story about community, family, love, and bonds across generations.

Set in an isolated coastal town in northwest Ireland, Long Time, No See centers around an unforgettable cast of innocents and wounded, broken misfits. The story is narrated by a young man known as Mister Psyche who takes up with and is then drawn into a series of bemusing and unsettling misadventures with two men some fifty years his senior—his grand uncle Joejoe and Joejoe’s neighbor The Blackbird—wonderful, eccentric characters full of ancient jealousies and grudges and holding some very dark secrets.

Written with great lyrical power and a vivid sense of place and published to rapturous reviews in England and Ireland, Long Time, No See is a sad-comic tapestry of life and death that celebrates the incredibly rich lives of ordinary people.

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About the Author:

Dermot Healy is the author of three novels (including A Goat’s Song), a memoir, a collection of stories, and five volumes of poetry. His prizes include the Hennessey Award for Short Stories, the Tom Gallon Award, and the Encore Award. He was the winner of the 2002 America Ireland Literary Award, which was funded by the America Ireland Fund and given in recognition of his contribution to Irish letters.

Review:

Praise for Long Time, No See

“A grand read, funny and provocative...tenderness and affection win out despite gunfire, despite ancient jealousies and grudges.” —Annie Proulx, The Guardian

“Funny, sad, wild, tender, profound, brilliant...Ireland’s finest living novelist.” —Roddy Doyle

“A family saga bristling with curiously appealing oddballs and misfits.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Healy’s first novel in ten years is a triumphant return...A beautiful account of one person’s acceptance of his own quiet heroism.” —Library Journal

“Highly stylized, chock-full of colorful dialogue, and steeped in Irish idioms, this is a leisurely read about ordinary folk acting out the dramas that make a life.” —Publishers Weekly

“Compassionate and elegiac...a celebration of the whole gift of existence...everyday chores and family obligations are elevated to the level of epiphany.” —The Times Literary Supplement

“Unforgettable...Nothing happens, but everything happens. Times passes. People die. It all seems so true to actual life, so tangible and authentic...so real you feel you could step into the book and live there.” —The Sunday Independent

“Terrific and exhilarating...Healy’s characters have mouths full of poetry... the poetry of the everyday, laconic, idiosyncratic, and wonderfully droll...Every page is a pleasure to read and the entire book is, as one of Healy’s characters might put it, an astonishment.” —The Sunday Times

“A richly compelling comic-sad tapestry of love and death in which, like the pauses in a Pinter play, truth lurks in what’s left unsaid, catching us off guard.” —The Independent

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